by Babs Horton
He scoured his mind for a clue. Who did he know who had a child? Apart from Uncle Sammy all his family were dead. Most of his old friends he had long since lost touch with. There was Max in Venice, but he’d never been interested in women and the last Solly had heard he was living with a professor of linguistics called Pietro.
It was quite ridiculous, but somebody somewhere had made a conscious decision to send Dancey to him. They knew his name, where he lived…And in the pocket of her dress there had been a piece of paper with directions to his house written in three languages, English, French and Spanish. There was nothing written, though, about where she came from, who she was or what he was meant to do with her. He knew that some time soon he’d have to contact the authorities but he didn’t want to hand her over to the nuns at St Joseph’s. He felt strangely responsible for her; someone had thought him a fit enough man to put a child into his care and he wasn’t willing to hand her over to the ill treatment of the nuns. Not yet, anyway. Maybe he’d phone Uncle Sammy in London. He was a shrewd old bugger. He had contacts in nearly every European city from his work in wartime. Maybe he’d find a key to unlock the mystery, for Solly sure as hell couldn’t.
If he’d been a younger man he’d have questioned whether the child was actually his, he’d had a few romantic dalliances in his youth. He knew that was impossible, though, it was well over fifteen years now, he thought sadly, since he’d been involved with a woman.
It was all a total mystery. The only thing that he knew for certain was that he was a different man since she’d arrived. Change had been suddenly thrust upon him, if only temporarily, and it had brought out new emotions in him.
He stood and watched the waves roll on to the beach and thought that he was happier than he had been in many years. He wondered had he ever been truly happy? He smiled ruefully. Yes, for a very short time as a young man he had been blissfully happy. Or at least in the ignorance of his youth and his lack of experience he had convinced himself that he was happy.
He sighed. He didn’t like to dwell on the past and what might have been. What was the point? He had his memories, but what were they worth, eh? A head full of useless recollections; snapshots of loved ones now dead, home movies of the mind that he reran and others that he had long since banished.
He wondered how anyone looking at him now would describe him. A lonely slightly hunched middle-aged man taking a bracing walk on a windswept beach. He’d been lonely, of course, over the years but he had learned to live with loneliness the way he supposed one would learn to live with a limp. He’d even got to like it in a perverse kind of way. Until now.
He was comfortably off financially; his investments kept on growing despite his indifference to them. He had his few pleasures, music, books, a glass or three of fine wine or whiskey. He made occasional visits to old Uncle Sammy back in London for old time’s sake.
Stooping to pick up a scallop shell from the beach he turned it over in his hands and was about to hurl it into the sea when he was startled by a voice behind him.
“Hello there. Is it cold enough for you this morning?”
Solly, awoken from his reverie, swung round and stared in surprise at the new village priest. The priest was red in the face, his dark hair whipping across his cheeks, his eyes watering.
“Hello.”
“Well, this wind is certainly picking up a bit again. That was a hell of a storm last night. There’s another on the way 111 bet, if I was a betting kind of man of course.” The priest said, blushing. “Sorry, am I interrupting your thoughts?”
“No, no,” said Solly.
“Father John Daley,” the young man said, holding out his hand to Solly. “I was wondering when I’d bump into you, Mr Benjamin, you’re a hard man to track down. I have an apology to make.”
“An apology?”
“Yes, I’m afraid I took a short cut without permission through the grounds of your house the other day.”
“No need to apologize.”
“The funny thing is, I thought I heard a child scream, a terrible ear-piercing scream.”
Solly stiffened. If this man got to know about Dancey he’d no doubt report it to the authorities and she’d be taken away to the nuns.
“They say the Dark Wood is haunted, but in my estimation that’s a load of old twaddle. Most likely one of the orphanage kids escaped and was playing in the woods.”
“I expect you’re right. Ah, a scallop shell, the emblem of the pilgrim,” Father Daley said, nodding towards the shell that Solly was still holding.
“Sorry, I’m not with you?”
The priest smiled.
“The scallop shell is the emblem of the pilgrims who walk to Santiago.”
“In America?”
“No. Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain. They used the shells as makeshift spoons and cups. Anyway, enough of all that, I’m a mine of useless information. I was wondering, if it’s not an impertinence, if sometime you would care to come up to the presbytery for a drink and a chat. I think you’re the only member of the community I haven’t yet got acquainted with.”
Solly smiled.
“I don’t think you’d be doing yourself any favours with the folk of Ballygurry by inviting me into your home.”
“But I don’t care what the folk of Ballygurry think of me,” the young man said hesitantly.
“Then you’re a very brave man,” laughed Solly.
The priest smiled again and blushed sheepishly.
“I only wish that were true. I am, in point of fact the world’s greatest coward.”
“Come now, don’t denigrate yourself. How are you settling in to Ballygurry?”
“It’s an unusual place,” the priest said with a slow enigmatic smile.
“It is that. I take it you’re not used to small Irish towns? More of a city man?”
“I’m not used to Ireland, full stop, Mr Benjamin.”
Solly looked at him in surprise.
“Ah,” said the priest. “My accent?”
Solly nodded.
“My parents moved to England from Cork when I was five or six, I never lost the brogue. But me, I’m more used to the dance halls of Cricklewood on a Saturday night than a jig in the village hall. And yourself? I take it you’re not a native of Ballygurry.”
“Ah, ifs a long, long story. My father was third-generation English; my mother was French. I spent my childhood between Paris and England and other parts of Europe. Then, somehow, I got washed up here.”
“Right.”
“But you’re wondering why a wealthy Jew with no visible occupation came to be living in a run-down house on the west coast of Ireland?”
The priest blushed again, more deeply this time.
“Incurable curiosity, I’m afraid. My mother always said that it would be the ruination of me.”
“Mothers can be wrong, you know. Curiosity will no doubt be the making of you!”
“I hope so.”
Solly looked with interest at the priest, an eager young man probably not much older than thirty. An easy man to talk to, thought Solly, a good listener. He’d have plenty of listening to do in Ballygurry. He’d have his handsome ear bent this way and that by every woman under eighty.
“Well,” said Solly, surprising himself, “I’ll decline a drink at the presbytery if that’s all right with you, I don’t like to be away from home for too long in the evenings, but if you’d care to step up to my house one of these nights you would be more than welcome.”
The priest grinned.
“Thanks, I will. I have a free evening tomorrow, would that be all right?”
“Tomorrow night will be grand. But come under cover of darkness if you know what’s good for you.”
The priest laughed an easy good-natured laugh. Then he checked his watch.
“Hell. I’m late. I must fly.”
“See you tomorrow night then.”
And Father Daley was off, sprinting athletically across the beach, clambering over the d
unes and on up the main street of Ballygurry.
Solly lingered on the beach for a while longer letting the iciness of the wind seep through his black overcoat, chilling his shoulders and creeping down his arms until the discomfort drove him towards home.
He smiled as he realized that he was actually looking forward to returning to a house that was no longer empty. And he was looking forward to meeting again with the young priest. He hadn’t had a decent conversation in years with anyone in Ballygurry, or anywhere else come to that. Of course he made civilized small talk with his accountant in Cork, his Dublin solicitor and the rambling talks about the old days with Uncle Sammy when he visited London, but nothing that ever aroused much interest in him. There was something so eager about the priest, an enormous unbridled energy and innocence about him that was intoxicating. He thought, though, that he had recognized a degree of worry and disquiet in the young man too, and that puzzled him.
Miss Nancy Carmichael woke up with a pounding headache. She’d spent a restless and uncomfortable night sleeping on the floor beneath the kitchen table in case the house was hit by lightning. Now she was so stiff and cold she could hardly move. She filled the kettle and put it on the stove and swallowed two aspirins.
She felt irritable and jittery, and not just because of the storm. There was something decidedly fishy going on in Ballygurry at the moment Father Daley, for a start was looking most out of sorts, and whenever she spoke to him he tried to avoid her. He looked pale and distracted and had stumbled over his words three times in mass on Sunday. Every time she and Miss Drew tried to collar him and talk about the forthcoming pilgrimage he backed away and made some feeble excuse. There were less than two weeks to go before their departure for Lourdes and yet the travel arrangements had still not gone up on the church notice-board.
And then there was the theft of her clothes. Someone had climbed over her back wall in the dead of night and taken her brown paisley dress and two pairs of darned pants off the washing line. And if that wasn’t enough they’d taken her old gardening shoes as well. Whatever was the world coming to? And she could hardly report it to Sergeant Kearney in Rossmacconnarty and give a description of her underwear, could she? It would be mortifying.
On top of all that there was the gossip about the Black Jew. After years of keeping himself to himself he’d been into Donahue’s for a drink. And bought a tin of ham! God forgive him. There was talk too that he had a loose woman staying with him, though no one had actually seen her. It had been noted, though, that he’d been into Miss Drew’s shop and bought half a pound of toffee, a slab of chocolate and four ounces of pear drops. Poor Miss Drew had been half terrified out of her life when the bell above the door had rung and the horrible old thing had walked in as brazen as you like.
And he’d also been seen buying fancy talcum powder and soap in the general store in the next village.
Nancy Carmichael poured a generous measure of brandy into a cup and swallowed it down in one gulp to steady her frazzled nerves. Something wasn’t quite right at all in Ballygurry.
Father Daley walked along Mankey’s Alley, and as he did he wondered if the rumours he’d heard around the village were true. All the talk in the village was that Solly Benjamin had a fancy woman installed in his house. It had certainly set the tongues wagging in Ballygurry. He’d heard Mrs Cullinane tell Miss Drew that she’d seen lights on in an upstairs window of Nirvana House in the small hours. Honest to God, to get a sight of the windows she’d have had to be perched on top of her chimney, and if not she must have been wandering around Ballygurry in the dead of night. Come to think of it he’d seen Mrs Cullinane skulking down to Kenny’s farm once or twice.
He stepped up to the front door of Nirvana House and rang the bell. A few seconds later a flustered Solly Benjamin answered the door.
“Good evening, Father, come in do. I was just having a quick tidy round when you rang the bell.”
Father Daley stepped into the hallway and looked around him. It really was a very beautiful house and, although it looked a bit run down from the outside, the inside was lovely.
He followed Solly along the hallway and into a large wood-panelled sitting room where a fire burned merrily in the hearth. Solly indicated that he take a seat and he sat in a large comfortable leather armchair on one side of the fire.
The only strange thing about the exquisitely furnished room was that on a side table an expensive-looking Chinese vase was filled with freshly cut dandelions. Father Daley wondered was there a Jewish custom regarding dandelions maybe?
“Let me get you a drink. Beer? Whiskey? Gin?”
“A whiskey would be grand.”
Solly poured whiskey from a decanter into two cut-glass tumblers and handed one to Father Daley.
“Your good health, Father.”
“Good health. Please call me John.”
They sat on either side of the hearth for a while in comfortable silence.
“So how are things going for you in Ballygurry, John?”
“Oh, so-so, it takes a bit of getting used to. They don’t teach you half the things you need to know in the seminary.”
“What sort of things would they be?”
“Well, I’m inundated every day with broths and cakes, offers of Sunday lunches. I’ll be the size of a house by the time I move on.”
“Are you thinking of moving on already?”
The priest blushed and was about to reply when there came a loud bump from overhead and a muffled cry.
Solly Benjamin leaped to his feet in alarm.
“Just excuse me a moment, John.”
He hurried from the room and Father Daley listened intently. He thought he could hear the sound of murmuring voices coming from upstairs. The fancy woman no doubt.
After a few minutes Solly came back into the room and picked up of all things a rosary from a side table and went back upstairs.
Father Daley wondered if perhaps the rumours about Solly Benjamin’s fancy woman being a Catholic were true.
Outside an owl hooted and through the windows he saw the huge pale moon rise above the tops of the trees of the Dark Wood.
Father Daley took a long swig of whiskey and sighed. No smoke without fire, he thought. Still, it was none of his business. There was definitely someone upstairs, though. Maybe Solly Benjamin was like Mr Rochester and lived like a recluse because he had a mad wife hidden in the attic. He thought about the scream he’d heard that day when he’d climbed over the wall into the Dark Wood and he shuddered.
Then he heard the sound of Solly’s footsteps as he came back down the stairs.
“Sorry about that. Where were we? Talking about moving on.”
“Oh, take no notice of me. I dare say when it comes to it I’ll stick it out. It’s just all strange at the moment.”
“And lonely?”
“Yes,” said Father Daley and took another gulp of his whiskey. “No one warns you about the loneliness,” he added sadly.
The fire was warm and the whiskey had mellowed Father Daley, loosened his tongue, for he spoke again without thinking.
“The thing is, I’m in the most almighty pickle. The last priest, you’ll probably remember him, Father Behenna, well it looks as if he’s done a runner with the entire amount of money for the pilgrimage to Lourdes.”
Solly Benjamin raised his eyebrows, guessing that the man had been troubled by this for some time and couldn’t wait to get it off his chest. Sometimes it was easier to confide in a stranger.
The priest swallowed more whiskey and looked uncomfortable.
“Well, that does put you in something of an awkward position.”
“The thing is, I tried to contact him to sort the whole thing out, but it seems he’s vanished to London.”
Solly rubbed his chin and looked thoughtful.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
“Have the hotel bookings been made?”
“No. I contacted the hotel where we were supposed to be stayi
ng but nothing has been booked and, what’s worse, all the hotels in the area are already full.”
“There is always a solution to a problem in one way or another,” Solly said softly. “More whiskey?”
Father Daley held out his glass.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t unburden my problems on you.”
“Like I said, every problem has a solution. Something will undoubtedly turn up.”
Solly looked at the young priest and his heart went out to him. He was a man of integrity, a good man.
“Perhaps we could exchange our difficulties. I’ll have a try at solving your problem and there’s a mystery perhaps you could help me with.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Let me get us a refill and 111 explain.”
Solly poured two generous measures of whiskey and sat back down.
“It seems to me, John, that you have several options. Firstly you blow the whistle on Father Behenna and the law becomes involved, but I sense that you’re reluctant to do, that am I right?”
“Yes, you see the thing is I only spent a few days with the old fellow but I don’t think he was, well, quite himself, he was throwing bucketloads of drink down his throat. I mean he must have been eighty-odd if he was a day. I don’t really want to set the law on his tail and have him spend his last days in jail.”
“Problem one solved then. Leave the law out of it. So the only other problem is obtaining the money to replace what is missing.”
“You have it in a nutshell.”
“That I can solve for you. I can let you have the money.”
“No, no that wouldn’t be right, I mean you’re not even a…”
“A Catholic, Father? It wouldn’t be right for a Jew to pay for a bunch of Catholics to go on a holy pilgrimage?”
Father Daley blushed and smiled weakly.